Part of the spacing issues for the movies has been the desire not to interfere with schooling for the children involved. While all those who started with the production at the beginning have now finished school (Daniel Radcliffe just turned 18), other actors have been introduced who are still school age. This has an impact on the production schedule.
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Not sure about all of them, but Daniel Radcliffe was on a sliding scale that started off with $100,000 for the first film and points in the film with each film paying more in salary. He has a current net worth of about $35 million (USD) and that’s not counting whatever he takes from the next two films. Hermione and Ron probably don’t earn as much but they ain’t hurtin’; Emma Watson acknowledged in a recent interview that as long as she’s not stupid (buying everything she sees) she never has to work again, so she’s a multimillionaire. The third tier- Neville and Draco and crew- probably have very nice nest eggs that’ll let them live comfortably for a very long time.
So the series has made Rowling a billionaire, multimillionaires out of the actors, and will probably net over a billion for the studios and billions for the publishers. Rowling’s agent alone has earned tens of millions USD and Radcliffe’s agent would be a millionaire from his take. I’m sure Gambon and Maggie Smith and Rickman can pay off mortgages with their haul as well, and I certainly hope Imelda Staunton reaps it in because she’s the best of the lot. Essentially, Rowling has generated more wealth than most third world nations GNPs with stories about a boy who can’t be killed.
Finally got around to seeing the movie. Overall, I thought it was good, and mostly cut out the right stuff.
The girl who played Luna hit just the right note - totally flaky, but likable.
Lucius Malfoy was perfect. Kinda like an upscale, evil Riff Raff.
But I wasn’t crazy about Bellatrix. I mean, Helena Bonham Carter played the part well and all, but the trailer-trash, low-rent Elvira look was jarring. She’s one of those proud-to-be-a-pureblood types; for years, I’ve envisioned her looking aristocratic for all these years.
Alan Rickman continues to be terrific as Snape.
Well, she had just spent 15 years in Azkaban.
Okay, just saw the movie. The thing that gets me is that the more involved the books get, the leaner the movies get.
We didn’t see Snape acknowledged as the one who warned the Order after Harry told him, “They’ve got Padfoot!”
I understand they had to cut all the Quidditch ( :mad: ) but would it have killed them to show more of the teachers’ resistance to Umbridge? And I thought Fred and George’s big kiss-off could have been much better…in the book, she finally corners them after all the pranks, they tell her to stuff it, and all hell breaks loose. I was especially waiting for McGonagall to hiss at Peeves “It unscrews the other way.”
I thought Cho being forced to reveal the DA was acceptable, but I would have loved to have seen Whatshername with SNITCH across her face. Hermione is an excellent witch, and we didn’t see much of that this time.
I loved the training of the DA…such a wonderful sequence. The thestrals were lovely, and Luna was a sweet girl, and I think they showed her understanding she was being picked on quite well.
I would have liked to have seen Lockhart and Neville’s parents.
Maybe it’s because I love the books so much, but I just wish they didn’t have to leave so much out.
We didn’t see the movie until after having read Book 7.
I was disappointed in the movie; unlike Goblet of Fire, where the book was bloody awful (worst book in the series by a considerable margin), I didn’t go into this movie with lowered expectations.
I did expect them to have to edit the hell out of it; it’s a huge book. They could’ve made an all-fall miniseries out of it and gone with 6 hours’ worth of screen time and still found it necessary to chop out some of what was in that book. But the editing was pretty awful. Rather than select a handful of subplots and handle them well, and bracket the rest off as much as possible, the movie skims along the surface of a double handful thereof and leaves many of them as unfinished business, with the net effect that those subplots just don’t work in the movie.
The most egregious of these is Hogwards School of Magic finally turning on Umbridge after she’s assumed Dumbledore’s position. A very watered-down & incomplete face-off between Umbridge and McGonagall (that stole what should’ve been Maggie Smith’s best screen time of the series), and a Fred & George scene that gets aborted just as it’s getting going good by Harry getting visions of Sirius in trouble.
But spotty jobs were also done on: the Snape/Harry conflict over occlumency; Harry’s angst-y alienation from Ron and Hermione; the prophecy, and why Voldie gives a rat’s ass; and Kreacher vs Sirius (and versus the Order in general) including the betrayal.
Nevertheless, lots of good scenes and good plot development:
Umbridge, as noted, excellent, well played and well cast;
The Dumbledore’s Army, training, etc; they had enough of Harry’s isolation prior to that point to make it work, good job
The final fight in the Ministry: excellent, superlative when it was the kids versus the Death Eaters; a bit confusing when the adult Order shows up (at that point they were trying to do too many thing simultaneously), but all in all better than the book, as others have already said.
Fudge: well done, a fearful nay-sayer who is out to get Harry yet without being a Voldemort stooge. Inept and corrupt, but not volitionally evil. “He’s back!!”. heh.
I liked the movie better than Goblet, and I think better than the first movie Sorcerer’s Stone, but definitely not as much as Prisoner of Azkaban and not really as much as Chamber of Secrets.
I think an extra 45 minutes’ worth of footage (and not, dammit, devoted to yet more special effects) would have really propelled this movie out of the mixed-bag zone. They cut too much muscle meat off the bone for it to really work, though.
Had she just escaped in time for the battle at the Ministry?
In the movie, her clothes don’t look like quality clothes that have deteriorated during 15 years in Azkaban; they look like stuff that just came off the rack at the Risque Girls’ Shoppe.
pretty much. she didn’t have time to get her usual wardrobe. she was trying to get to her great love tommy.
she dresses better in the following books.